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Friday, July 4, 2014

2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying draw seeding for UEFA (4 July 2014)

I received last week an e-mail from someone at Deloitte with questions about the 2018 seeding for Europe. I planned to update this after the World Cup, but since the 4 remaining UEFA teams are in the first pot and there are no other matches involving European teams before the 0.5 time frame closes, here's the current situation.

Assumptions:

- UEFA will keep the current qualifying system
- FIFA will use the FIFA ranking to seed the teams
- UEFA will choose the July 2015 ranking for seeding

The July 2015 FIFA ranking will include matches played between July 2011
and July 2015. This means the 0.5 time frame is set for all European teams except Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

This the July 2015 ranking (for UEFA only) using matches played up to
and including July 2nd, 2014 and matches scheduled up to July 2014
(only those on fifa.com).

The "0.5" part is computed this way: points gained / (number of matches played + scheduled).

Looking to improve your FIFA ranking before the draw? Use the e-mail address from my profile to contact me.

19 comments:

Because at the moment Gibraltar is not a FIFA-member their EURO 2016 qualifying matches are not included on fifa.com. Technically, this leads to a ranking list without Gibraltar. Wiki states: "Gibraltar is not yet a member of FIFA. However, the GFA aims to become a full FIFA member in time to participate in 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification."

Do you know do points obtained by Poland and Ireland (and other teams) vs. Gibraltar count for the FIFA ranking if Gibraltar are not a member of FIFA? What if Gibraltar joins the FIFA in the middle of qualifying tournament, would points then be calculated retroactively for the time they were not a member?

Well, at the moment Gibraltar's opponents do not obtain points for their matches as Gibraltar is not a FIFA-member yet and does not appear in the FIFA-ranking.

As soon as Gibraltar is a full FIFA-member -and according to the Wiki-statement that will be before July 2015 when the WC-2018 qualification draw is performed- FIFA could certainly retroactively include all the EURO-2016 qualification matches of Gibraltar into their fixture-list, calculating the matchpoints for the already played matches with the ranking at the moment of Gibraltar's admission and Gibraltar at spot 210 in that ranking.

2nd July 2015, has that date been released by FIFA as the scheduled date for the rankings? I see the draw is announced for 25th July, but I dont see any ranking release schedule for 2015 on their website. Where did you learn of 2nd July? This year the July ranking was released in 17th and 2013 was released July 4th.

It could be critical which date FIFA choose to release the July 2015 rankings. For Netherland after July 12th could see them drop into Pot 2, but before they will be safe with the win against brazil in WC 3rd place playoff still counting at 100%.

Greece deserve 1st seed always qualify for pazt tournuments ok there playen bad now down manager and some players have no confidence playing for a poor manager like ranneri now he is sacked greece make finals euro 16 and world cup 18